A study in unhuman sexual expectations

A study in unhuman sexual expectations

Kungsträdgården, Stockholm, Sweden

Two rabbits. Each with big, Disney-like eyes, loveably wonky ears, and a confused, befuddled expression. One standing. One, inexplicably, lying down…or perhaps collapsed, blacked out, mown down, dead? It’s difficult to tell. There’s something unsettling in this work by Marianne Lindberg de Geer. These two rabbits look like they’ve just stepped out of a children’s cartoon. But they are behaving in a way cartoon rabbits in children’s cartoons would never behave. They’re being strange. They’re being unfathomable. Tucked away in the foliage not far from the rabbits is a small plaque bearing the name of this work of art. A study in unhuman sexual expectations. These are not cartoon rabbits at all. They are rabbits struggling with everything that’s strange and unfathomable about sexual expectations. Unhuman or otherwise. Underneath the cute is the reality. And isn’t it the case for human beings also? That underneath it all, we’re strange, we’re unfathomable. And struggling. But, were it not for the title of this sculpture, these rabbits may just have got away with it, with convincing the on-looker of their cuteness, their innocence and straight-forwardness. As is always in life, it seems context is everything.